Where are the good cops?

In mid-1980 my brother answered his telephone and heard a voice that he believed belonged to an unknown elderly white woman.

“You’re trying to DESTROY the white race!” she screamed at him over the phone and immediately hung up.  The woman had mistakenly dialed my brother’s phone because it was the only telephone number listed under our last name in the book.  The call was meant for me because I was litigating a desegregation case of a local school district at the time.

It has always been villainy, in the eyes of some, to demand equality for all people.  Assertions of the rights of people of color have always been deemed by racial bigots to be declarations of war.

For several months now, conservative pundits have been howling about a “War on the police” that they believe has been precipitated by the Black Lives Matter Movement and progressive politicians.

The villains, as they see it, are the visible spokespersons who articulate on behalf of the Movement, as well as public officials, like the former Attorney General, Eric Holder and President Obama, who voice opposition to police brutality and the denial of constitutional rights to persons of color.  Never mind that these are rights most white people take for granted).

The ugliness of white supremacist trolls who spew their hatred over social media give evidence to the outrageous bigotry that blindly endorses every violent act of a law enforcement officer, whether legal or not.

To be clear, it should be acknowledged that there are differing levels of opposition to the Black Lives Matter Movement, just as there are differing levels of support.  But this is nothing new in the history of the evolution of social justice.  In the 1960s, there were those - Black and white - who cautioned that Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were trying to move too fast and too far.

But putting all desire to nestle in our comfort zones aside; we must acknowledge the fact that we are in a war.  And we have been at war in America for almost four centuries.

This is not a war of bullets and bombs.

This is not a war between Black and White.

We are, and have been for almost 400 years in America, in a war of Ideas, notions, beliefs and prejudices.

The notion that the inhabitant of a Black body is less valuable, less worthy and less human than the inhabitant of a white body was ginned up in order to morally justify the theft of those black bodies and the labor that they could produce.  Economic necessity in the agrarian south required that this notion become dogma so as to remain the unquestioned engine that created Southern wealth.

For over two and one half centuries that dogma of white supremacy was enforced by slave codes in the South and by many codes of conduct in other parts of the country.  And the validity of those codes had to be upheld through the enforcement of the law.

To borrow from one of my former professors:

“Law is a process of authoritative control, whereby certain elites establish and maintain a particular public order.”

The Southern planters and Northern industrialists have always realized that the “particular public order” that they wanted required cheap labor.  And in the antebellum South, that meant free labor. 

Cheap labor was assured through the maintenance of an American underclass.  And by virtue of the American dogma of white supremacy, Blacks were relegated to this role.  The Black American underclass was established in the infancy of this nation, and the maintenance of Blacks in that status, through authoritative control, was the job of law enforcement.  Hence, the whips, the chains, the guns and the nooses.

The elites of America needed cheap labor, and for centuries law enforcement used violence to see to it that there was an ample supply.  In many instances, law enforcement officers were merely thugs employed to keep Black people “in line;” not unlike anti-union goons.  There was little difference in the behavior of the police at the Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama and the behavior of bat wielding thugs at factory gates; because thugs in blue uniforms are still Thugs.

But, while the historical culture of law enforcement in America has changed considerably in the last fifty years, remnants of that old culture linger.

Angered by the film maker Quinten Tarantino’s support for the Black Lives Matter Movement, Jim Pasco, the Executive Director of the Fraternal Order of Police, has threatened Tarantino with an unpleasant “surprise” related to his upcoming motion picture.  It is a sad commentary on America that law enforcement officials will threaten someone for exercising his or her right to free speech.

Pasco’s words and tone are reminiscent of the threats and Intimidation by swaggering, uniformed bigots who ushered in fascist regimes in Germany and Italy over a half a century ago, resulting in catastrophic chaos and slaughter.

The American public is constantly told that the majority of police officers are “Good Cops” who work for the benefit of all citizens.  But where are the "Good Cops" that so many of the pundits and politicians keep assuring us are out there?  Can anyone be called a "Good Cop" if he or she stands by and lets the swaggering bullies threaten people for exercising their rights to free speech?  Do good cops stand by and allow unreasonable searches and seizures?  Do they say nothing when a 12 year-old is slaughtered for playing with a toy gun in a park?  Do they support their brothers in blue who execute a man whose only crime is walking around a Wal-Mart with a newly purchased air rifle?  Are they silent when a man is falsely arrested and then driven to his death by a "rough ride" in a police van?

Where are the “Good Cops” when the leader of the Fraternal Order of Police equates anti-police abuse with anti-police?

Until the "Good Cops" stand up and identify themselves by their actions in support of our Constitution, human dignity, and the value of Black Lives along with the lives of everyone else, we can safely assume that those who have not stood up for justice can not to be counted among their number.

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